


Hellfire

by alphahelices



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-02 18:31:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10950294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alphahelices/pseuds/alphahelices
Summary: Like steel, Tabris was forged in fire.





	1. Out of the ash

               As a child in the alienage, she stayed out late with her cousins, running home with dirt in her hair and pebbles in between her toes only as the sun finally set. She tumbled in through the door, a heap of laughter and late summer freckles, and her mother rolled her eyes and mumbled something about raising a troublemaker, with no disappointment in her voice. Tabris would beam proudly up at her, all skinny legs and rounded cheeks. Together they washed the filth from her hair, combed and plaited it until it lay neatly down her back, and the next day when Tabris came home another mess, her mother was never angry. _My troublemaker_ , she’d say, and reach for the comb. While she tugged out every knot and tangle, she hummed old tavern songs and told her daughter stories of the battles she’d faced and the enemies she had struck down.

                Years passed and her mother was gone more and more. _Another little errand_ , she’d say, and pull her blades from their hook on the wall. Tabris would come racing in at just sunset to find her father stirring the stewpot alone. The first few times he offered to braid her hair for her, but he was rough with the comb and his stories were never as good. So Tabris scrubbed the dirt from her own scalp and tugged out every tangle and wove her hair into a loose, messy braid that would always fall apart too soon. In the mornings she’d meet up with her cousins with her hair half-tied, and that was how Shianni and Soris knew to go easy on her, to expect her to be quicker to anger than usual. Days or weeks would pass and her mother would return, and Tabris would arrive in the morning with every hair in place, and she had all new stories for them to play-act in the streets until sunset.

                One night, Tabris woke to a frenzied knocking on the door. Her mother told her in a whisper to stay in bed, but Tabris crept quietly after her. Soris was standing on the doorstep, smelling of smoke. Behind him the dark night was lit with flames. He told them his house was on fire, through hiccups and coughs, said the guards had set it. Her mother sent Tabris and her father to help Soris find his family, promising Soris they would be fine, and as they rushed out the door Tabris looked over her shoulder to see her mother pulling her weapons from the rack on the wall.

                The house was a mountain of flame; Tabris looked at it from the street and felt the heat on her skin and tried hard to think of something to say. Cyrion bid them wait in the street and went plunging into the inferno while Tabris rubbed Soris’s back and listened to the roar of the flames. Around them, elves darted past in the dark, running toward or away from vengeful guards.  An eternity later her father returned, covered in soot and pulling the blackened body of Soris’s brother, and he said something gentle with a hand on Soris’s shoulder. They took him home with them that night, gave Soris the spare bed and wrapped his brother’s tiny body in a blanket to deal with in the morning, and together Tabris and her father stayed awake all night waiting for her mother to come home. She never did.

                In the taverns, later, Tabris heard stories of the guards that took down her mother, how many she killed before they bested her. When the elves told stories, they spoke of her like one of the warriors of legend, and when the human guards told the stories, they spoke of her like a demon, ripped from the fade in a blaze of fire as they purged the alienage. Tabris found her mother’s extra daggers in a dusty chest one day, and took to practicing with them in the garden, imagining herself being talked about with fear and reverence in the darkened taverns of Ferelden.

                In that manner, she came of age; quieter now than she had been as a child, less her mother’s proud and laughing troublemaker and now the calm and terrifying start of a resistance. Her scrawny limbs turned thinly muscled, and her eyes were always watching over her shoulder. Valendrian and her father arranged a marriage, hoping to quiet the soft hum of rebellion building within her. She was angry with them, so angry. Only when her father looked at her with moist eyes did she remember everything he had lost too, and she closed her eyes and sighed and agreed to do what he asked, knowing he only wanted her to be happy.

                Tabris dressed in her finest clothes and pretended to be content. Feeling empty, she stood in front of her family and said the words Valendrian fed her, and then the humans swept in. She looked at the guards with her eyes blazing and thought, _how dare you take more from me_ , and then someone hit her from behind and she fell. She woke later in the damp cellar of the arl’s estate, and Soris arrived and put a cold sword in her hand, and she gathered herself and imagined how her mother must have looked in the bloody streets in a night lit by flames and sparking steel. She struck out again and again against every guard in her path, and she saw all her weaknesses and knew her practices in the garden were not enough. When she killed Vaughan, slowly and calmly, she felt nothing but burning humiliation at every strike his guards had landed against her.

                The guards found her hours later, after she’d scrubbed the last of the blood from her skin, and when they called for the killer to step forward she knew she had no choice. She stood tall and said it had been her and only her, avoiding Soris’s eyes entirely out of fear of betraying him. Duncan cut in, offering her a way out, and without thinking she took it. Her father cried at losing her, and she hugged him and kissed his cheek and promised she’d be okay. He patted her hand, sniffing quietly, and told her that he knew. She was her mother’s little troublemaker, he said, and she smiled grimly and left before he could see that she was crying too.


	2. I rise with my red hair

                They reached Ostagar and she found herself unsure how to behave. Here she was, surrounded by humans, and for the most part none of them seemed hostile. She settled on staying quiet, only speaking when spoken to, and she spent most of her time alone in the camp. Duncan sent her into the wilds and she agreed without questioning, and when they first ran into darkspawn she barely hesitated before launching herself at them. When they all lay dead, she turned to see her companions staring at her, as if they were reevaluating her. Alistair joked less on the way back, and the other recruits kept their distance from her in between battles, and then immediately attached themselves to her side when another ambush struck.

                Upon their return, Duncan called them to the Joining, and Tabris stood beside a raging bonfire and drank darkspawn blood with her face set like stone. She woke from a nightmare and was sent off to battle and brought down an ogre with her quick daggers and careful strategy and more than a little luck. Moments later they were swarmed by more darkspawn, and she held her own as long as she could, only to wake in a witch’s hut in the wilds, one of the last two Grey Wardens in Ferelden, with a pounding head and an archdemon to slay.

                She spent nights in the camp looking over maps and talking strategy with Alistair. He’d  stopped telling jokes since Ostagar, spending most of his time looking sad and distracted. He spoke of traveling to the distant corners of Ferelden like it was nothing special, and so Tabris hid her trepidation and delight at exploring the world outside her alienage. She spoke to him only when necessary, until one night he came up behind her while she was cleaning her daggers and asked her curiously where she had gotten them, and without thinking, she told him. He listened, and then he told her of his own mother, and then the next day he started making silly jokes again. Eventually, one afternoon, he made a crack at Morrigan’s expense that was really sort of clever, and Tabris let herself laugh.

                They passed their days just like that, scaling mountains and fording rivers together in search of their promised allies. As they ticked fulfilled treaties off their list Tabris found herself laughing at more of Alistair’s jokes, even the really dumb ones. Things were easy with him, and comfortable, and it was nice to laugh and let the tension ease out of her muscles while they were saving the world. With shaking hands and a nervous smile, he gave her a rose, and she took it without thinking about him being a shem. He tried to kiss her, and she had to stand on her tiptoes and he had to bend down to get their faces level, but still their lips met. Slowly she realized the red-hot anger in the pit of her stomach didn’t burn so fiercely anymore.

                He taught her what it meant to be a Grey Warden, and she laughed at his stories of drunken recruits and wild misadventures. She was quiet when he told her about the Calling and the certainty of an early death, and he kissed her gently and promised they would go into the deep roads together, when the time came. It sounded like one of her father’s trite stories, and she told him, and he pretended to be offended and then kissed her a little harder.

                They reached Orzammar last, and went down into the deep roads in search of a paragon. They battled what seemed like endless armies of darkspawn, and after the third ambush in as many days Alistair looked over at Tabris, panting heavily in the stifling air. The grave look in his eyes told her he was thinking of when they’d return in a few decades, answering a Calling and fighting to the death. She met his gaze in equal seriousness, and then she pulled a face, because maybe he was rubbing off on her a little bit. And they laughed, in the deep roads, among the darkspawn corpses and the thick cold air and the smell of old earth. When they made it back to the surface, feeling like they’d fall into the sky, they held hands like children. He looked at her and smiled and made a joke about how if he ever had to go back down there he was glad it would kill him, and she laughed in agreement. In the evening, at camp, he asked her to spend the night with him, and she didn’t even think of her wedding day when she agreed. He told her he loved her, and she knew he wasn’t joking.

                But the blight wasn’t over yet, and as soon as they marched into Redcliffe with the promise of an army at their call, they were being told to turn around and make for Denerim in a desperate attempt to catch the darkspawn horde. Riordan, the Orlesian warden, called them aside and told them gently that one of them would die in slaying the archdemon. He promised it would be him if he had the chance, and Tabris, feeling soft, believed it would work out. She told Alistair they had no reason to worry, and left the room without looking at him.

                In the middle of the night, Tabris padded quietly across the hall into Alistair’s room. He wasn’t asleep. He pulled her into bed with him and pleaded with her, _please don’t die tomorrow_ , his voice a broken whisper. She reminded him that Riordan promised to make the sacrifice, and he said _right_ in a small voice, and then they lay together in silence and pretended they were in control of the situation.

                As the siege of Denerim began, she watched Riordan come tumbling out of the sky from the back of the dragon and knew how naïve she had been. With her blood running cold and her heart pounding, she knew that she would strike the fatal blow when the chance came. Next to her, Alistair looked away, and she knew he was thinking the same thing. Hours later, on the roof of Fort Drakon, the archdemon lay dying and Alistair finally met her eyes. His face was bloodstained and dripping sweat, but he stared at her evenly with no fear in his eyes. He told her it was his duty as the senior warden, that he needed to strike down the dragon, and more importantly that he could not bear to live without her if she were to die in his place. She told him she wouldn’t let him die, and her hand was on her blade when he looked her in the eye and said, _you say that as if I'm giving you a choice_. And then they were both racing toward the dragon, blades drawn, but his legs had always been longer than hers and he crossed the distance just that much faster and she was thrown back in a blast of bright light.

                She woke later, in a makeshift infirmary in the castle, and watched mages heal her wounds without speaking. No one told her what had happened, but she knew. She stayed in bed, and though her friends came to comfort her, she asked them quietly to leave her alone.

                Wynne came to her side in a few days, placed a hand gently over hers, and told her about the funeral that afternoon. She said they were giving him the sendoff he deserved, that everyone in Denerim was going to pay their respects, and offered to help Tabris down to the castle grounds. Tabris only pulled her hand back and said she wouldn’t go. Wynne patted her cheek in a helpless sort of way, standing to leave. On her way out, she tugged the window open, and said Tabris could listen from here if she wanted.

                He had a hero’s funeral, and in Ferelden that meant a funeral pyre. Tabris sat in her bed, alone, hearing the crowds gather below, and imagined Alistair burning. Behind her eyelids, she saw the blackened body of Soris’s brother, felt the blistering heat of the fire on her face, and when she opened her eyes she saw ashes start to fall on the windowsill. She shut the window.

                Days later, the queen hosted a ceremony to honor her, though Tabris couldn’t think of anything she’d done worth honoring. Anora asked her what Ferelden could do to repay her, and feeling like she was in a fever dream, Tabris said she didn’t want Alistair to be forgotten. The queen promised her a statue on the coastline in his honor, and Tabris almost laughed in her face; what was a statue when Alistair was dead? How could a statue bring him back? She was sweating. It was hot in the castle and in every corner she saw a layer of ashes, and wondered how much of it had once been Alistair. The queen pushed her out to the courtyard, prompting her to address the gathering crowds, and Tabris spoke empty words she’d never remember between shallow breaths of smoky air.


	3. And I eat men like air

                Tabris spent a few more days in Denerim with her family, but she felt alien in her father’s home. She left as soon as the promise came of a need for her overseas; she couldn’t breathe in Ferelden anymore, not with Alistair’s ashes in the air. As she sailed away from the docks, she looked over her shoulder to see workmen raising the scaffolds for Alistair’s statue.

                She passed her years rebuilding the Grey Wardens, recruit by recruit. She trained them mercilessly and befriended none of them. At night, when the ale was passed around, the young recruits shared stories of their Warden Commander, the hardened little elf who had freckles under her battle scars and who sometimes almost smiled when a recruit did well. Then the older wardens would come over, swaggering and laughing, and tell stories from their missions, of how the Warden Commander fought more recklessly than anyone, of how she took blow after blow and never fell, of how much hatred burned in her eyes when the darkspawn came out. They joked that she never joined in their drunken celebrations because she was always off listening for her Calling; they joked that she didn’t want to miss her shot at every darkspawn in the deep roads.

                Her grizzled old mabari finally took one blow too many in battle. The young recruits helped Tabris carry the dog back to the keep; they thrummed around her in loyal sympathy. One of them said the dog deserved a pyre, and soon they all started saying it. She yelled at them, told them to let it go, and at night the recruits heard her burying the dog in the garden. In the morning she saw they had all laid flowers and old ham bones on the little unmarked grave. Never one to linger, she jumped at the next opportunity to travel. A mission came from the Free Marches, and she was on a ship first thing the next day. The earthen mound of her warhound's grave was still raw and fresh.

                Tabris sailed off in the morning with a handful of recruits, letting the ship captain pay attention to where they were going. It was only on the third day that she realized they were swinging right past the port of Denerim. The younger recruits had gathered on the ship deck and were pointing and murmuring. She came to their side to see what had caught their attention, and looked up to see Alistair staring back at her. The stone of his statue was rough-hewn and did no favors to the sharp lines of his nose. His cold stone eyes stared proudly off into the distance, and instead of the usual teasing smirk he bore in life, his jaw was set in a serious, firm line. He looked every bit the king he had never wanted to be. The recruits chattered about the Hero of Ferelden, the Grey Warden, and Tabris told them in no uncertain terms to shut up. He’s just another dead hero, she said, and there were plenty of those.

                They arrived in the Free Marches to find Kirkwall burning, and Tabris felt strangled in the rising smoke. She rushed through the city, striking down rioters and vengeful Qunari. When they found a band of warriors struggling through the thick of it, Tabris handed them an old trinket of Alistair’s and spat out hasty words about how it belonged to the hero of Ferelden, how he didn’t need it anymore. They looked appreciative, and as they went charging away in the smoke and the ash, Tabris wondered vaguely how much of the air she was breathing had once been another someone, another hero.

                Years later, she was alone in her quarters while the recruits were celebrating, and just like they all guessed, she was listening. Only this time, she heard it, her Calling. She told only her highest ranking officers in the morning, and in the afternoon she boarded a ship for Ferelden. She’d always meant to go down in the deep roads outside of Orzammar. In the evening, her wardens threw a party for her, only to find that she’d already gone. She docked in Denerim, and even now she felt the air was full of ash, and every breath was of Alistair. It was only in the stifling air of the deep roads that she felt she could breathe.

                She went without a torch, knowing her eyes were good in the dark, and her hatred was enough to keep her warm. She went in with her blades, striking down foe after foe, and she began to imagine that in some cruel trick of the Maker’s, she would actually do it; she would kill every darkspawn in the horde, and burst through the other side, and have to return to the surface where the air was full of Alistair and no one would know what to do with her, a hero who didn’t die. She fought harder, faster, a whirling frenzy of steel. In her mind she saw Soris’s flaming house, and the empty hook on the wall where her mother’s blade used to hang, and the dead bodies she left behind in the arl’s estate. She saw the ogre in the Tower of Ishal, and Loghain marching away from battle, and every single enemy they fought on the road as they endlessly traversed Ferelden, and she saw Alistair, looking her in the eye and saying, _you say that as if I’m giving you a choice_.

                The angrier she grew, the harder she fought; like steel, she was forged in fire. And here, in the deep roads, she whirled and parried and slashed, a hateful flurry of death. Tabris never found the end of the darkspawn horde, but she took out as many as she could before they got the best of her. When it finally happened, she died quickly and unafraid, smothered gently like old coals in the belly of the earth.


End file.
